Old Haunts

By Maryanna Gabriel 

Heading back to one's past is always a tricky business and here I was going to it. It is always a sense of coming home when I look at the mountains of Vancouver. On the north shore where I lived I feel like everything is miniaturized somehow. I have grown larger or it has become diminutive and feeling much like Alice In Wonderland, scale and perspective are all askew as I take it all in. 

My spirits soaring, I skip in the sunshine by the sparkling waters of Burrard Inlet. Happy childhood memories return to me as doggies amble by and seagulls swoop in circles. I stop for awhile and watch a fisherman cast a circular net then admire the tasteful and subdued rock formations placed as natural sculptures by oceans edge. Lovely wave-shaped wooden benches curl beside bundles of grasses as running water pools and splashes into gushing fountains. I deliver the painting that had been commissioned and visit with my friend who is always wonderful to see. We eat crab cakes and gossip happily. Housing prices here average three million and it is always nice to think - if only... but it is time to go. Later I mused that this was the first time I have visited and not returned to the old family home. I take this as a good sign. I point the car north. 

Author's Tea

By Maryanna Gabriel

All of that roaring about in the night paddling my heart out seems long ago. Now I do things like the Author's Tea. The invitation was an unusual one. It was from the local library. Would I wish to join local author's for a formal tea being one myself? Why, yes, I replied. I would. It felt all very L.M. Montgomeryish. I was in a tizzy.

I wore my purple dress. Somehow that seemed important. Were the cups going to be nice, I wondered? Should I carry a handbag? How was I to hold forth and so on.  As it was, it was very nice. A woman sat next to me, also in a purple dress which somehow seemed significant. I read her name tag. I murmured faintly, "You didn't review my book." She blinked. I grew bolder. "I sent Owen's Grandmother And The Little Black Box to you." "Oh," she said, "..but I did review it! Here let me show you." We both peered into her phone. Nada. Nix. Nein. "There has been some mistake," she said. She promised to queue it again. 

I floated over for more canapes feeling somehow like the world had taken on a golden glow. It was a distinctly different paddle of the heart but just as intense.